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| May 2005
The Store: Image Sitting Pretty Handy pockets safely file, organize and display loose gemstones By Robert Weldon, G.G. Gemstone envelopes – known as gem papers in the trade – have their share of problems. You can’t see the gemstone because it lies under wraps. Or while unwrapping, a loose gem can pop from the unfolding paper, sending everyone to their hands and knees in a desperate hunt for the missing gem. Jeweler Bob Sirratt met with other jewelers in 1976 to discuss solutions to such problems. “We wanted to find a better, safer way to show unmounted gems to our customers.” Sirratt practiced switching an unmounted stone in a paper to further make his point. “You can get a gem to roll out, distract the jeweler and drop another one into the fold,” he explains. One jeweler declared he would buy anything that worked better than a paper. Sirratt and John Troy, another jeweler, went right to work on a new system to display and file loose gemstones. They found a transparent plastic that maintained its form, was hard One Good Thing Leads to Another Sirratt and Troy incorporated and a few years later, as exports of File-a-Gem trickled to locations around the world, Sirratt bought full share of the business. As File-a-Gem use grew, it required a larger filing system. Sirratt developed a sales wallet, into which several gems could be tucked and displayed. Sirratt developed versions of File-a-Gem for big stones and little ones. These developments led to other designs engineered to make a jeweler’s handling of loose gems easier. “In business, it is all about making a good impression,” Sirratt emphasizes. “Why not be safe and organized at the same time?
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